[digging]

Clearly the symptoms aren't the same as just holding your breath, which makes me think that it is not, in fact, completely nonreactive. (But I'm a total noob to biochemistry.) Similar to Nitrous Oxide, which definitely has a powerful psychedelic effect and is not at all simply hypoxia.

[alan-hn]

React is not a good term to use here but rather interact. Saying something reacts means that we are moving around electrons and possibly forming covalent or ionic bonds. Intermolecular interactions are quite a bit different

[ttyprintk]

Or displace, in this case exotic xenon for ambient argon and nitrogen.

[devilbunny]

Argon is basically a rounding error in atmospheric gases.

Xenon has been the gas anesthetic of the future for a long time now. It does have one set of good qualities: it's not halogenated (like all common gas anesthetics), but it's nonflammable (there are very good anesthetic gases, like cyclopropane, that are extremely flammable and have thus been totally phased out of use), and because it's such a heavy atom, it essentially never leaves the atmosphere - no matter how much you use, you can always recapture it from the atmosphere.

It's not particularly cheap, though.

[ttyprintk]

Much higher quality comment than mine above.

I suppose from the article that a dose of Xenon is $300 of gas, of which $50-$80 is not immediately reclaimed by a rebreather.

[RIMR]

Xenon gas is nonreactive, but it can dissolve into your blood and influence the very sensitive chemistry of your brain.

[janalsncm]

I wouldn’t call nitrous oxide “psychedelic” although it is certainly psychoactive.

[digging]

It depends on your definition of psychedelic then, as I find different sources supporting either argument, but NO2 produces powerful hallucinations, euphoria, dissociation, and sometimes creativity much like typical psychedelics, but on a compressed timescale.

[alan-hn]

Many people also consider ketamine a psychedelic and the primary mechanism of action is NMDA antagonism preferring the NR2B subunit

[mrob]

It's common to distinguish between "psychedelics", which primarily function via serotonin receptors, and "dissociatives", which primarily function via NMDA receptors.

[alan-hn]

The term psychedelic is describing specific subjective effects rather than a mechanism of action, what you're thinking of are the classic serotonergic psychedelics which are 5ht2a agonists but ketamine and other dissociatives can be considered dissociative psychedelics

[cess11]

Not really. Cannabis and salvinorins are commonly used for psychedelic effects. Many psychedelic compounds cause dissociation, e.g. LSD.

[dr_dshiv]

I’ve heard that Ketamine is a psychedelic deepener more than a psychedelic on its own. Ie, a little ket addition is similar to taking a much higher dose of psychedelics (but short duration): high definition mental imagery and expanded external visual effects. With a good set & setting, that combo nearly guarantees a mystical experience.

[alan-hn]

A compound that can deepen a psychedelic experience can also be a psychedelic on its own. There are people who like to smoke DMT during the peak of an LSD experience because of this deepening but both are capable of producing mystical experience on their own, just as ketamine (especially the S isomer) is capable of

[TylerE]

As someone who had it during surgery... it's 100% psychedelic at sufficient dose.

[meindnoch]

Hallucinations on N2O? How long do you have to breath it for that?

[robbiep]

Not very long necessarily. You just need to be primed

[konfusinomicon]

it sure does make other psychedelics a lot lot lot more intense though